April 21, 2016

How India Sees the World

The following article originally appeared in The Diplomat on April 21, 2016.

India’s history of Third Worldism and Nonalignment and
its traditional overuse of the term “strategic partnership” have long created
the illusion that New Delhi treats all foreign relations on a somewhat equal
footing. But beyond bland public statements marked by diplomatic niceties, a
lot can be discerned about India’s worldview by other means. Organizational
structures are often an excellent indicator of a government’s priorities and
concerns. Mapping the geographical divisions at India’s Ministry of External
Affairs (MEA) paints a rather revealing picture of how India sees the world.

Function over Form

One clear pattern that emerges is that MEA’s geographical
organization is primarily functional. Take India’s immediate neighborhood,
where whole divisions are devoted to just two or three countries. Landlocked
and mountainous Nepal and Bhutan are grouped together, while Myanmar is coupled
with Bangladesh, rather than with the rest of Southeast Asia. Sri Lanka and the
Maldives are considered as part of the Indian Ocean. And Iran is grouped with
Pakistan and Afghanistan, indicating how much India sees policy toward those
three countries as interconnected. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government
has only bestowed a name – “Neighborhood
First” – on what has clearly been a longstanding approach, although the
articulation of that policy may have helped give it momentum and direction.

There is often a concern – as at the U.S. Departments of
State and Defense – that foreign policy becomes uncoordinated because countries
fall under different geographical bureaus. At first glance, this appears to be
the case for India in the Middle East (or West Asia, to use India’s preferred
terminology), where the region’s major actors – Turkey, Iran, Israel, and Saudi
Arabia – fall under different divisions. However, this structure also confers
certain advantages, allowing India to simultaneously advance various objectives
with multiple actors, such as defense and space ties with Israel, energy and
infrastructure considerations with Iran, and diaspora and counterterrorism
priorities with the Gulf Arab states.

The imposition of functional interests over neat
geographical divisions is perhaps most readily apparent in Africa. Eastern and
Southern Africa are areas that are not just more proximate to India, but also
enjoy deeper historical and people-to-people ties. Large Indian communities,
including merchants and traders, thrived in South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, and
Uganda, all – like India – former British colonies. By contrast, India had far
fewer historical contacts with Western Africa, which falls mostly within the
Francophonie. Instead, from India’s standpoint, that region is defined by
commodities and resources including energy, of which Nigeria and Angola have
become increasingly important suppliers.

The Rajamandala

Just as revealing as how India divides up the world is
how much attention it pays to each region. The number of countries in each
division offers one point of comparison. The fact that 30 countries in Western
Africa receive roughly the same resources and attention at MEA as two Indian
neighbors indicates the greater attention that India devotes to its immediate
periphery. Another factor is the number of diplomatic missions – embassies,
high commissions, and consulate-generals – that India has in each region. Nine
missions catering to 25 countries in Western Africa points to Indian diplomatic
resources being spread far thinner than, say, the same number in just the United
States and Canada. The Lowy Institute’s delightful Global Diplomacy Index,
which catalogues and maps the global diplomatic presence of all G20 and OECD
countries, helps to generate a pretty clear picture about India’s diplomatic
priorities.

Based on the number of countries per division and the
number of missions per country, three tiers are readily apparent. In the top
tier – the first circle of the Rajamandala, to riff on the Kautilyan term – are
divisions that cover India’s immediate neighborhood, encompassing the members
of the South Asians Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) plus Myanmar
and Iran. The importance India places on relations with the United States and,
increasingly, China is also clear. India’s relations with the two biggest
global powers are similar but fundamentally unequal. The United States shares
space with only Canada, whereas China does with Japan, South Korea, and North
Korea, and Mongolia. The presence of five Indian consulates-general in the
United States is also indicative of the importance of the Indian-American
diaspora. Despite growing commercial relations with China necessitating Indian
consulates-general in Shanghai and Guangzhou, people-to-people ties between the
two most-populated countries still clearly lag behind political and economic
relations.

Beyond India’s immediate neighborhood, the United States,
and China, a second tier includes bureaus covering some of India’s most
important strategic and defense partners, including Russia, Western Europe, and
Israel. It also includes India’s extended neighborhood: Southeast Asia, the
Gulf, Central Asia, and Eastern and Southern Africa, regions with historical
and civilizational ties to India and large number of overseas Indians. All
these regions represent areas where a rising India could potentially devote
more resources in the future.

Finally, a third tier is home to a number of important
countries such as Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, and Nigeria, but includes regions
that are neither strategically significant for India nor home to large numbers
of ethnic Indians (excepting, perhaps, the Caribbean). Relatively speaking,
India’s diplomatic resources in Central Europe, Western Africa, and Latin
America are stretched thin, and in all these areas, India’s diplomatic corps is
focused more on commercial relations than on strategic or consular matters.

Reallocating Diplomatic Assets

The decisions taken over the years at MEA to divide of
the world into certain units and establish a physical presence in various parts
of the world may have been organic, but has not been arbitrary. While there is
a clear logic and sense of priorities, certain shortcomings in India’s global
diplomatic presence are also apparent.

One obvious weak point is Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is
faintly ridiculous that India should have wider consular networks in Indonesia,
Vietnam, South Africa, Turkey, Iran, Japan, Germany, Brazil, and Thailand than
it does in two of its most important neighbors. The diplomatic principle of
reciprocity means that just as India has no consulates-general in Pakistan,
Pakistan has none in India. Despite repeated provocations against India
supported by Pakistan’s military and no indication that Pakistan has stopped
sponsoring terrorism, both Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif have
indicated a clear desire to normalize bilateral relations between their
countries. Establishing consulates-general in both countries would be an
obvious place to start. Despite some evident challenges, such as security
considerations, Indian consulates in Lahore and Karachi (with reciprocal
Pakistani consulates in, say, Mumbai and Amritsar) would help expand commercial
and social engagement between the two countries, strengthening the
constituencies that favor normalization. Meanwhile, there is even less of a
reason for India not to have a wider diplomatic presence in Bangladesh,
particularly given that relations are set to improve following the conclusion
of the historic land boundary agreement between the two countries.

A second possibility involves rethinking Europe, which
has rapidly fallen in India’s list of priorities, but is also undergoing
monumental changes of its own. The old divisions of east and west are no longer
particularly useful. Germany, given its economic performance, its growing
leadership role in European affairs, and its importance for India’s
development, is deserving of greater attention, along with France – with its
competitive defense, nuclear, and space sectors – and Britain, which enjoys
longstanding cultural and economic links with India. In other words, it makes
sense to give priority to Europe’s Big Three. Meanwhile, other bilateral
relations in Europe, as well as those with the European Union, could be
consolidated, to the benefit of India’s uneven relations with the EU.

Third, despite India’s Act East policy, the Southern
division – which covers Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Southern Pacific –
appears increasingly unwieldy, and involves the largest number of diplomatic
missions, with 21. The division oversees relations with several countries that
are of growing importance to India, such as Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, and
Indonesia. MEA does have a dedicated ASEAN division focused on multilateral
affairs but, nevertheless, hiving off Southeast Asia from Australia, New
Zealand, and the South Pacific would nicely complement Act East.

The final area to possibly consider is Eastern and
Southern Africa, a region that has been developing greater strategic and
economic significance as part of the Indian Ocean basin. Currently, South
Africa is the only African economy with which India has broad diplomatic
dealings and a diversified economic relationship. But given their geography and
traditional connections to India, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia could
be bigger priorities in the future, India’s gateways into what is already the
fastest growing continent.

While a lot has been made of the small size of India’s
diplomatic corps – an important problem, but one being addressed – few
appreciate the reach of India’s diplomatic presence. Only nine countries (the
P-5, Germany, Japan, Brazil, and Turkey) currently have more foreign embassies
and high commissions than India. Identifying weaknesses and priority areas
deserving of greater diplomatic attention will be necessary if India is to
strategically expand its diplomatic footprint, and thereby leverage its
commercial relations, widen its strategic ambit, and provide better consular
and other services to overseas Indians.